Bodley North don’t like Mondays…

The Boomtown Rats was the music of choice on the way out to last night’s Bodley match in Blanchardstown, but the King Rat wasn’t the only one averse to Mondays after the Bodley North came back with a 5-0 hammering and a team-full of off days.

The boards were finished in ascending order. Board 5 was a scratch. Board 4 saw David push pawns in front of his own king in a game which saw opposite-side castling, with predictable carnage. On 3, Eóin played 32 pretty good moves to be winning throughout and on the verge of a won rook and pawn ending before his last move, a pretty crappy one, simply hung back-rank mate. Beside him, Joe simply moved his queen to g5, where it could be taken by a knight; bizarrely, his opponent didn’t take, attacking a piece instead and giving Joe a way of losing just a piece, which he instead turned into losing two pieces for a pawn. And on top board, Daniel dropped two pawns inside the first six moves, then overlooked a possible counter-attack to instead drop another piece – but this being the Bodley, he was given a reprieve when his opponent somehow dropped two pieces and a rook to leave Daniel with two rooks against a rook and three…and 100 seconds on his clock. Alas, he managed fewer than 10 moves in that time and lost having just hung his own rook to go to R v R+P, which was probably a draw anyway.

So, let’s just say not the best night the team has ever had! There’s three tough games to finish the season off, and the target at the moment looks to be a seventh-place finish for the second year in a row.